IA22.7
She'd been getting on nicely with Sergeant Hitchcock, reckoned she had him pretty easily charmed. He reminded her of Freddie in some ways, oddly. The same cleft in the chin, the same way of licking his lips when he was nervous. She knew how to push his buttons, how to breathe on his cheek and send shivers down his spine, how to grip his thigh with a firmness that hinted at more but guaranteed nothing. She got a kick out of how easy men were in her hands, a kick that disgusted her almost as much as it excited her. His eyes glazed over as she slowly unzipped his fly. She could smell his arousal. A cleared throat. "Sir." A double take, a fumbling for the zipper, pushing back his chair towards the window, adjusting his hair. "Hallaghan, just... just the person I was going looking for. I understand you arrested this delightful young lady's friend earlier." Hallaghan was sweating, and he rubbed his piggy eyes with fat fingers. "Who would that be, Sir?" Hitchcock fiddled with his tie. "That's the thing - she doesn't actually know his name, but from her description it sounds like the man you and Harris took down to the interrogation room." Roni looked from Hitchcock to Hallaghan and back. She couldn't tell who was more uncomfortable. "Maybe if I..." she started to say. "We released him, Sir. We arrested him by mistake, and we let him go about half an hour ago." Hallaghan seemed relieved, as if he was pleased at his own cleverness. Roni didn't doubt for one second that he was lying. Hitchcock seemed to breathe more easily. "Well, Miss Hallow," he said, smiling. "It seems that your trip here was a waste of time." "I wouldn't say that," she smiled, and watched his face redden. "I could give 'Miss Hallow' a ride home, sir. Just to show that we appreciate her comin' down here, and we're sorry that her time was wasted." "It's okay," said Roni, hastily, but Hitchcock intervened. "I insist," he said. "It's the least we can do." Harris drove, and Roni and Hallaghan sat in the rear. She could hear his breathing. Short, shallow breaths. His eyes were focussed on her legs, and all too soon his hand was there too. Fat, cold, clammy fingers, pushing into her flesh. She smiled at him. She'd learned that lesson early. Smile and they relax. Smile and they think that you're enjoying it. Smile and they think that you're giving them as much pleasure as they are taking from you. Smile, and maybe — just maybe — they won't hurt you. She'd been the last one in her class to hit puberty, but by the time she was fourteen she was well ahead of the pack. Attractive, cocky, and the biggest tits in the school. It gave her a popularity and a notoriety that she found curious but that she milked for all it was worth. She knew that the football team all claimed they'd fucked her, and she wouldn't be surprised if some of the teachers claimed it too, and she didn't care. She was invulnerable. She wasn't invulnerable. She lost her virginity on her way home from school. An August evening, with the sun low in the sky and an orange-blue glow that made even the mundane seem alive with magic. Cutting through a back lane behind the soda fountain. A Hispanic, one of the slow learners who hung out by the girls' locker rooms and just liked to listen. She couldn't remember his name now, although she was sure that she knew it at the time. He was hiding behind a Dumpster, and he had a knife. It looked strangely beautiful, glinting in the sunset. She remembered that. She couldn't remember the look on his face as he walked towards her, or anything that he said, but she could still picture that knife. She could still remember how it felt against her throat, although she couldn't remember how he felt inside her. She remembered the colour of her blood, and remembered scrubbing herself for hours, unable to cleanse herself. And then it seemed like everyone knew. Everyone was talking behind her back, sniggering at her, suddenly stopping conversations and turning away as she approached. She saw the Hispanic kid everywhere, and he always smiled. The Principal called her into his office and called her a dirty whore, told her that she was on her way to expulsion unless they could reach some sort of understanding. She spent a lot of time in his office that semester. Somewhere around that time she went a bit crazy. She felt detached from her life and detached from her body, so she didn't really care who used it or what they did to it. If she smiled, sometimes it made them happy. If she moaned, sometimes it made them faster. If she asked for money, sometimes they gave it to her. If she liked the guy, sometimes she enjoyed it. And then she found herself again. She wasn't sure when, but she liked to think it was to do with meeting Freddie. Hallaghan unzipped his fly and used the barrel of his gun to force her head down onto his short, fat cock. His underwear smelled of urine and she felt his fingers slip into her panties. Harris kept his eyes on the road, and kept driving. Ramona had followed the money all her life. She came to Hollywood in 1933 with the sole intention of sleeping with Rock Hudson — a goal that she never achieved — and found herself a lucrative little niche in the market. Hollywood was an escape, pure and simple. For her, it was an escape from being mousy little Judith White from Macclesfield. In Hollywood, you were nobody unless you were beautiful. Everyone who was anyone was a model, or an actor, and drove around in limos and hobnobbed with the Goldwyns and the Warners. People looked at Hollywood with stars in their eyes. Ramona looked at Hollywood and saw a million stories of failure. She was damned if she was going to be one of them. She was reborn in the fall of '34, thanks to a bottle of peroxide, a pair of stilettos and a fake Spanish accent that she dropped pretty fast. Ramona Blanca. People came to Hollywood, aimed for the top and failed. And after they failed, most of them came to The Feeling. Discreet little place, just off the strip. Plain façade, done up in mock-luxury gold and red inside. A few rooms upstairs, a couple of rooms downstairs. The beer was lousy but cheap, and she spread the word that you could get anything inside. She did her damnedest to make that true. Girls and a few boys for hire upstairs, a specialist chemist in the basement, and a sickly-sweet smell in the air that kept the clientele slightly higher than they thought. She kept open through prohibition through a combination of back-handers and acting as a police informer. The Feeling lived on. The facelift was a present to herself when she turned forty, blowing two weeks profit on an acid and scalpel job. She didn't tell anyone though, putting it down to a two-month vacation in Tijuana and the love of a good man. She was always twenty-eight after that. Hallaghan and her went way back. He'd tried to blackmail her when a busted young queer in her employ gave him some juicy details on what she sas running, back in '47 when he was still new to the force. She got him drunk and photographed him with a six-year-old. After that, they came to an understanding. He respected her and kept his distance; she loathed him and kept the negatives. A detective in the know at Hallaghan's precinct, one of Ramona's regulars, once told her that that understanding had ruined Hallaghan's career. He never got over knowing about the hold she had on him. Failed his sergeant's exam, got even harder on the creeps he rousted, never got off the beat despite his war record. She'd laughed. When Jerry Horowitz walked in to The Feeling in March of '55, she recognised him from the papers. Big shot surgeon. Rather attractive, too. She had him shown to a table by the stage, and watched him for a while. He showed no interest in anyone in the bar, and nursed his Tom Collins like it was the last drink he'd ever have and he really wanted to remember it. At length she joined him. They made small talk for maybe half an hour, while the Negro girl that Ramona had working for her that month sang slow love songs. He complimented her on her surgery and she let the comment fall into the lulls in conversation. They skirted around various topics of conversation - the Commies, whether man would ever walk on the moon, what they had done during the War. In the end, Ramona had to resort to asking Horowitz outright what he wanted. He told her, and she agreed. She followed the money. The first girl that Ramona sent to Horowitz was Lois Blumenfeld. She was twenty-three, and she'd been working for Ramona for five years. Lois was like a daughter to Ramona in some ways - she kept stealing money and expecting to be appreciated nonetheless. For Ramona, the equation was simple. Lois was only pulling in twenty bucks a night when she was working, and the house cut was seventy per cent of that. She was only working three nights a week though, and was too drunk to be any use the rest of the time. She was stealing from the till, and she had a habit. It wasn't a hard decision. Lois went for forty dollars. Ramona had a new girl in within a day. She even had a story ready - Lois had gone back to New Jersey to look after her mom - but nobody asked where Lois had gone. More followed, and not just the girls. Some of the clients too - the low spenders, the losers, the disconnected. She even brought Hallaghan in on the deal. He got twenty bucks for everyone he helped to disappear, although she reckoned he would have done it just for the pleasure of it. She was greedy, but he seemed to be getting more and more reckless. Three yesterday. One so far today. And he'd called her to say there was another one on the way. People were going to start noticing. Hallaghan dumped the unconscious girl in Ramona's office and grabbed a drink at the bar. "I always forget how cheap this dive is," he said. "I'm guessing that it's not my charms that keep you coming back, then." She ran a fingernail across his cheek, teasing his stubble. Hallaghan lunged for her finger with his mouth, but she snatched it back, putting it to her lips to silence him. "Shhhhhhh... Let's see what you've brought me today." Out of the bar and into her office, then. His eyes fixed on her ass, tight in the long, ice-blue evening dress with the slit up the side. She looks pretty fit, Ramona. He doesn't know that she's four years older than him, and he wouldn't look at her twice if he knew. She accentuates her hip movements, teasing him. "Fuck," she said. "What?" "I know her." A few months back. Roni had done some work for Ramona, over in Vegas. She'd been strictly freelance, looking for some extra cash. Ramona had been impressed by Roni. Hell, Ramona liked Roni. "Does that matter? She's street trash and the city needs cleaned up." "You got time for another drink before you head back?" "Bourbon." He sat back and looked at Roni while Ramona went to the bar. Such a shame really. She was a pretty enough girl, smart enough to know when to shut up, and she gave great head. She should have been at home baking some red blooded American apple pie and raising his kids. But no, she had to set a bad example. The world was a better place without her. Ramona brought his drink and he downed it in one. She offered him his money, and he tried to take it from her, but his fingers didn't seem to be able to touch the envelope. In fact, he wasn't even sure that he was focussing properly on his fingers - they seemed to be dancing in front of him. His last thought before he hit the floor was that she must've slipped him a Mickey. Hallaghan fell hard. }}